Attracting High‐Skilled Immigrants: Policies in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

Labour market shortages, structural problems and unfavourable demographics have all prompted governments to act, often by focusing on high-skilled immigration. However, policy responses have been very different. Some countries were able to adopt quite open high-skilled immigration policies, while others did not. This article provides a political economy explanation for this. It argues that, despite similar pressures, high-skilled immigration policy outputs vary due to shifting coalitions between disaggregated sectors of native high-skilled, low-skilled labour and capital. To probe this argument, the article examines coalitions in four countries (France, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom) from the late 1990s to present, and draws on original interviews with policy-makers, unions and employers' associations; official documents and the literature on immigration, political economy and public policy. The varying labour market organization of actors informs differences in coalitions which in turn has resulted in different high-skilled immigration policy outputs, cross-nationally and over time.

Highly skilled migration between the Global North and South: gender, life courses and institutions

“…Labour market policies keep adapting to the economic fluctuations in the host countries. There has been considerable attention to the role of policies in shaping skilled migration from a macro perspective (Boucher and Cerna 2014;Cerna 2011Cerna , 2014. Migration policies change depending largely on the political climate and to some extent on the economic regulations that govern the market (Cerna 2014).…”

“…Recognising this value many national governments started targeted highly skilled migrant programmes to attract and retain talent. The pioneer for such programmes was the United States of America, which was then followed by Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands (Cerna 2011;Shachar 2006). The European Union introduced the 'Blue card' to further improve mobility and transferability of skills across its member states.…”

“…Most previous studies on highly skilled migrants have been carried out in the fields of economics, regional studies and international relations (Cerna 2011;Docquier, Lohest, and Marfouk 2007;Ho 2011). Most of these studies focus on return on skills, impact on the economy, moving into and out of regions and the effect of changes in migration policies.…”

Determinants in Competition between Cross-Sector Alliances

“…Competitive environments cross different types of sectors as governments and not-for-profits also compete to win people over (Cerna 2014;Lindaman and Haider-Markel 2002;McConnell et al 2014) …”

“…For example, governments can take the lead in cross-sector efforts to make their countries seem a more attractive geographical option than another country,i.e., duopoly-more attractive than several other countries, i.e., oligopoly-a more attractive option than every other country, i.e., winner-take-all (Cerna 2014). Also, two cross-sector alliances can be pitted against each other, i.e., duopoly.…”